Edtech startup Classplus, operated by Bunch Microtechnologies Pvt Ltd, on Tuesday said it has secured Series D funding of $70 million co-led by Tiger Global Management and Alpha Wave Global.
The round also saw participation from Abu Dhabi-based Chimera Ventures, with existing investor RTP Global.
Classplus said that RTP Global has doubled its investment with this round.
The latest fundraise has doubled the valuation of Classplus to close to $600 million, the firm said.
The startup plans to use the fresh money to strengthen its product and expand global footprint.
“We’ll be deploying the freshly infused funds to take our product up by notches and expand our presence globally,” said Mukul Rustagi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Classplus.
“Going forward, we’ll also be investing in new acquisitions and partnerships that will enable us to continue delivering best-in-class experience to the educators and helping them create an impact in the education system by building bigger and stronger businesses,” Rustagi added.
Founded in 2018 by Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal, Classplus is a mobile-first SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform that enables educators and content creators to build their online presence, digitize their offline tuition centers and sell their courses online.
The platform said it has seen adoption from academic educators from K-12 (kindergarten to class 12) and exam preparation categories along with non-academic content creators from categories like fitness and lifestyle, personal finance, language training and programming among others.
“We like that the company can successfully cater to the large offline market of educators across segments such as K-12, test prep etc,” said Navroz D Udwadia, Co-founder, Alpha Wave.
“We also see a significant improvement in end tutor economics as a result of using Classplus – this results in sector leading monetization and retention trends,” Udwadia added.
Classplus claims that more than 75% of its educator base comes from tier-2 and lower cities in India.
The platform also claimed that it has onboarded over 100,000 educators and content creators from more than 3,000 towns and cities from India on its platform. It added that many educators have witnessed a 2-3X increase in profitability within six months of adopting its platform.
Recently, Classplus said it had announced expansion in Southeast Asian markets including Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. To be sure, Classplus is not the only edtech company looking to expand to international markets.
VCCircle had reported in February, that Vedantu, which is also backed by Tiger Global, was planning to expand to international markets by June this year.
Classplus had raised $65 million in a Series C round led by Tiger Global, GSV Ventures, and Alpha Wave Global in June 2021.
The company had also recently, appointed Zomato’s Vice President of Engineering Manish Chawla as its Chief Technology Officer, in a bid to focus on global expansion, and had roped in Sankalp Aggarwal, previously Head of Finance at Gaana.com, as its Chief Financial Officer in January.
In December last year, Classplus had announced an employee stock options plan dubbed 'ReSOP' policy for all its 700 employees, through which the company said it will offer stock options with a faster vesting schedule as a referral bonus to employees who refer to suitable candidates for open positions at Classplus.
